The cup that cheers.. E.F.L Away to Wrexham Tues Feb 11th 7-30.

[Worthy4England]

Who on here has said that?

I didn't say anyone on here has. This forum is a tiny fraction of the online discussion around BWFC. I said "the usual suspects online."

Well quite, but you tied the notion as to whether Schumacher had time or not to the already out in the wild toxicity. It's drama central out there which is why I'm sure quite a few folks on here don't bother with it. For some, I'm sure 4.5 years into project FV with all that's entailed, is already 2 years too long and if the message is "this bag of bits is brilliant and it's aligned to our strategy and systems" then I can understand some people questioning how long it should take to get this bag of bits above 8th/9th in the table and onto the HMS launchpad.

[dave the minion]

In Randall’s case the fact that as others have noted he pulls out of challenges and seems to not fancy the workrate much doesn’t help either.

He's played the equivalent of about 4 full games for us. For 3 different managers. In about 18 different formations.

None of us can make a judgement yet that he doesn't fancy the workrate.

Its maybe interesting that the new boss has fancied him in from the start and he's lasted most of the game in the 2 games he's been in charge for - he clearly sees something in him that goes beyond "pulling out of challenges" and "not fancying the workrate"

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

Reasonable. But I come back to my old favourite, that this model we're following was supposed to be better than a manager controlling pretty much everything (a la Fergie) - I mean he almost certainly didn't start his own spreadsheet of targets, but there was nowt much important happened without him. This model is supposed to give us advantages and is the only model successful teams follow.

We should get a better view as to whether our bag of bits can work with our new Head Coach, or it'll likely be his fault too. There's also the notion that last years bag of bits that ran into 1st during the first half of the season was actually a better team with a more nuanced approach, that the improvements we made to it from January last year. I doubt we'll ever know whether Evatt was pressing for a 4-3-3 or was told we can now buy these bits so maybe you should move to a 433.

*Every* model has failings. Brentford and Brighton release loads. A while back Chelsea tried to stockpile the best young players; among the ones they deemed surplus were Salah and De Bruyne. I suspect we can deem it at least a partial success that the new gaffer seems happy to play with the bag of bits rather than demanding a whole new bag.

Couple of notes on the latter point. I suspect Evatt got rather excited about certain signings - usually attackers (Collins, McAtee, Randall); we'll never know how hard he pushed for those signatures, but he was always very publicly grateful to the board for backing the plan etc and so on. Then, it's finding a way to fit all these folks in. Evatt must have been the only mon to have watched Southgate's Euro 2024 formation and thought "that's the very thing we need"; certainly in practice it looked absolutely dreck on us. (If he'd truly wanted to try a 433 he could easily have done it preseason or when things got desperate.)

Then again, that box is something Schumacher's looking at, so once again we come back to the idea that formations are important but they're only the starting point - what wins games is the fine detail.

[BWFC_Insane]

In Randall’s case the fact that as others have noted he pulls out of challenges and seems to not fancy the workrate much doesn’t help either.

He's played the equivalent of about 4 full games for us. For 3 different managers. In about 18 different formations.

None of us can make a judgement yet that he doesn't fancy the workrate.

Its maybe interesting that the new boss has fancied him in from the start and he's lasted most of the game in the 2 games he's been in charge for - he clearly sees something in him that goes beyond "pulling out of challenges" and "not fancying the workrate"

Schumacher has to work with what he’s got which clearly has a significant number of gaps from what would be ideal.

If we had the number 9 and combative midfield type Randall might be very good. The fact remains that he wasn’t in my view what we needed at all in January. Doesn’t mean he’s a bad player it just means he hasn’t added anything we didn’t have.

If we don’t go up this season I hope Schuey has complete free rein to shape the squad how he sees fit.

[Prufrock]

I still fear we haven't got a 9 but let's see.

At the minute, no. Vic is working hard again, but he's so clearly shot in terms of confidence. If Schumacher can get his head right then maybe we can get enough out of him.

At Plymouth his "target man" looked more like Collins than he did like Kevin Davies, so who knows. I love Collins, but he's not an aggressive pressing player.

Right now you'd say that's a priority for the summer.

Aye neither Hardie or Ennis are getting their arse out. They're both exactly the sort we need. Maybe Collins can do that, maybe we need someone in the summer.

[Worthy4England]

Reasonable. But I come back to my old favourite, that this model we're following was supposed to be better than a manager controlling pretty much everything (a la Fergie) - I mean he almost certainly didn't start his own spreadsheet of targets, but there was nowt much important happened without him. This model is supposed to give us advantages and is the only model successful teams follow.

We should get a better view as to whether our bag of bits can work with our new Head Coach, or it'll likely be his fault too. There's also the notion that last years bag of bits that ran into 1st during the first half of the season was actually a better team with a more nuanced approach, that the improvements we made to it from January last year. I doubt we'll ever know whether Evatt was pressing for a 4-3-3 or was told we can now buy these bits so maybe you should move to a 433.

*Every* model has failings. Brentford and Brighton release loads. A while back Chelsea tried to stockpile the best young players; among the ones they deemed surplus were Salah and De Bruyne. I suspect we can deem it at least a partial success that the new gaffer seems happy to play with the bag of bits rather than demanding a whole new bag.

Couple of notes on the latter point. I suspect Evatt got rather excited about certain signings - usually attackers (Collins, McAtee, Randall); we'll never know how hard he pushed for those signatures, but he was always very publicly grateful to the board for backing the plan etc and so on. Then, it's finding a way to fit all these folks in. Evatt must have been the only mon to have watched Southgate's Euro 2024 formation and thought "that's the very thing we need"; certainly in practice it looked absolutely dreck on us. (If he'd truly wanted to try a 433 he could easily have done it preseason or when things got desperate.)

Then again, that box is something Schumacher's looking at, so once again we come back to the idea that formations are important but they're only the starting point - what wins games is the fine detail.

I mean there's some obvious focus on Collins, McAtee and Randall, but there's quite a few other people in the bag too, and has been for a while, until recently, Arfield was in it! Dion was not widely regarded by a few when he first signed, so it's not unusual to get a spread of opinions. I come back to the complexity. Would I expect McAtee to look more integrated into the team 30 games into a season - yes, yes I would, but we always have had over 4.5 years some random excuses put forwards why this isn't the case. I think people can accept some of them, but then as I say, most Clubs have very similar excuses over that sort of time-frame. So I flip back to probably our L1 best period - last season Start-Jan. Despite replacing two very good players in Trafford and Bradley we had a decent run having replaced them with Baxter and JDC. No one would argue they were improvements at an individual level but as part of the team, they slotted in (despite our 51 goals against). We didn't tinker with it for a few games, then slotted Maghoma in v Fleetwood. What we were trying to do was broadly consistent (obvs Wigan gave us our usual dicking, so even that was consistent).

Nothing broken really and we end up top at Christmas (or in between Chrimbo and New Year)...Then for me we start adding random "better" bits - including Collins - but to accommodate these players we have to change what wasn't at that point broken in terms of where we were in the League - I still thought it's fcuking boring football as I continued my exile - It is an entirely reasonable question for me, for people to ask, "If we were top and added some better players, then how did we contrive to end up third, lose the play-off final and go downhill from there, to where we are now, all the time adding better players" There's lots of reasons that can be given, and most of them probably have, but it's not an unreasonable question - of course the answer will be "it's all Evatt" which may be in major part true, I doubt he ruined it on his own though, because there was certainly no mileage for him in doing that...

[GhostoftheBok]

Aye neither Hardie or Ennis are getting their arse out. They're both exactly the sort we need. Maybe Collins can do that, maybe we need someone in the summer.

We definitely need someone in in the summer, it's really about whether we need one striker or more than one.

The fact that Etete is here on loan (and injured already) tells you they need one in.

It's really about whether Vic is salvageable as a centre forward under Schumacher or not. Last season's Vic would be. This season's Vic you'd want to move on.

Vic would have to be offered a new contract to stay past the summer, so it's a big decision for the manager.

[jmjhb]

In Randall’s case the fact that as others have noted he pulls out of challenges and seems to not fancy the workrate much doesn’t help either.

He's played the equivalent of about 4 full games for us. For 3 different managers. In about 18 different formations.

None of us can make a judgement yet that he doesn't fancy the workrate.

Its maybe interesting that the new boss has fancied him in from the start and he's lasted most of the game in the 2 games he's been in charge for - he clearly sees something in him that goes beyond "pulling out of challenges" and "not fancying the workrate"

Schumacher has to work with what he’s got which clearly has a significant number of gaps from what would be ideal.

If we had the number 9 and combative midfield type Randall might be very good. The fact remains that he wasn’t in my view what we needed at all in January. Doesn’t mean he’s a bad player it just means he hasn’t added anything we didn’t have.

If we don’t go up this season I hope Schuey has complete free rein to shape the squad how he sees fit.

He does.

[BWFC_Insane]

In Randall’s case the fact that as others have noted he pulls out of challenges and seems to not fancy the workrate much doesn’t help either.

He's played the equivalent of about 4 full games for us. For 3 different managers. In about 18 different formations.

None of us can make a judgement yet that he doesn't fancy the workrate.

Its maybe interesting that the new boss has fancied him in from the start and he's lasted most of the game in the 2 games he's been in charge for - he clearly sees something in him that goes beyond "pulling out of challenges" and "not fancying the workrate"

Schumacher has to work with what he’s got which clearly has a significant number of gaps from what would be ideal.

If we had the number 9 and combative midfield type Randall might be very good. The fact remains that he wasn’t in my view what we needed at all in January. Doesn’t mean he’s a bad player it just means he hasn’t added anything we didn’t have.

If we don’t go up this season I hope Schuey has complete free rein to shape the squad how he sees fit.

He does.

I’d imagined so as everything I’ve heard about him suggests he wouldn’t have come here if not. But always good to have a confirmation.

[Worthy4England]

In Randall’s case the fact that as others have noted he pulls out of challenges and seems to not fancy the workrate much doesn’t help either.

He's played the equivalent of about 4 full games for us. For 3 different managers. In about 18 different formations.

None of us can make a judgement yet that he doesn't fancy the workrate.

Its maybe interesting that the new boss has fancied him in from the start and he's lasted most of the game in the 2 games he's been in charge for - he clearly sees something in him that goes beyond "pulling out of challenges" and "not fancying the workrate"

Schumacher has to work with what he’s got which clearly has a significant number of gaps from what would be ideal.

If we had the number 9 and combative midfield type Randall might be very good. The fact remains that he wasn’t in my view what we needed at all in January. Doesn’t mean he’s a bad player it just means he hasn’t added anything we didn’t have.

If we don’t go up this season I hope Schuey has complete free rein to shape the squad how he sees fit.

He does.

Are we still expecting some sort of late christmas present this week - some sort of announcement about something maybe?

[jmjhb]

In Randall’s case the fact that as others have noted he pulls out of challenges and seems to not fancy the workrate much doesn’t help either.

He's played the equivalent of about 4 full games for us. For 3 different managers. In about 18 different formations.

None of us can make a judgement yet that he doesn't fancy the workrate.

Its maybe interesting that the new boss has fancied him in from the start and he's lasted most of the game in the 2 games he's been in charge for - he clearly sees something in him that goes beyond "pulling out of challenges" and "not fancying the workrate"

Schumacher has to work with what he’s got which clearly has a significant number of gaps from what would be ideal.

If we had the number 9 and combative midfield type Randall might be very good. The fact remains that he wasn’t in my view what we needed at all in January. Doesn’t mean he’s a bad player it just means he hasn’t added anything we didn’t have.

If we don’t go up this season I hope Schuey has complete free rein to shape the squad how he sees fit.

He does.

Are we still expecting some sort of late christmas present this week - some sort of announcement about something maybe?

Should be end of this week/start of next..

[Worthy4England]

I'm all excited!

[jmjhb]

Sadly, not the news I wanted to hear. A change of mind at the eleventh hour. Frustrating but not the end of the world.

Onto the next one.

[Worthy4England]

Sadly, not the news I wanted to hear. A change of mind at the eleventh hour. Frustrating but not the end of the world.

Onto the next one.

Doh!

[The_Gun]

Sadly, not the news I wanted to hear. A change of mind at the eleventh hour. Frustrating but not the end of the world.

Onto the next one.

A free agent?

[boltonboris]

An investor? A new contract for Santos?